KBK update for Wednesday, 12th January

In December last year, a switch was presented to Deskthority for identification, marked “IEVT” and having SMK JM-0404-like mechanical contacts. I mistook them for being a Far East type in the same vein as the “HXJ-1”, “CS” and “YH-B” types with equally unidentifiable branding. The switches looked similar to old Tipro switches, but did not appear to be sufficiently similar. Consequently, I did not investigate them further, incorrectly assuming that it would be hopeless.

Fortunately, the owner promptly traced the branding to IEVT: Inštitut za Elektroniko in Vakuumsko Tehniko (Institute for Electronics and Vacuum Technology), a Yugoslavian organisation based in Ljubljana, now in Slovenia. More specifically, they located a Serbian seller offering for sale an IEVT switch and keycap brochure. At only 360 dinar (around €3 or $3.50) there is no reason not to snap this up, but my attempts thus far to obtain it have been thwarted. The brochure remains available with no takers, or at least no successful takers.

However, there was a clue in the mention of Ljubljana, as that is where the aforementioned Tipro are located. I enquired with my contact at Tipro and he revealed that Tipro were formed by staff from IEVT, and he found a later version of the brochure in their archives where the Tipro logo had been added. The details from the brochure are now available on the new IEVT Series TC (tall reed switches), Series TY (typical pre-DIN mechanical switches), Series TZ (DIN-compliant switches) and keycap pages.

The parts list for the Galaksija computer gives two possible switch series: TY and TX. The only clear photos show TY, and TX is not in the brochure. Some Galaksija photos hint at a low-profile RAFI-like switch that could be TX, but this remains to be seen.

Huge thanks to Tipro for helping out with this research.

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